Java Vs. Node.js: Epic Battle For Dev Mindshare

snydeq writes While it may have been unthinkable 20 years ago, Java and JavaScript are now locked in a battle of sorts for control of the programming world. InfoWorld's Peter Wayner examines where the old-school compiler-driven world of Java hold its ground and where the speed and flexibility of Node.js gives JavaScript on the server the nod. "In the history of computing, 1995 was a crazy time. First Java appeared, then close on its heels came JavaScript. The names made them seem like conjoined twins newly detached, but they couldn't be more different. One of them compiled and statically typed; the other interpreted and dynamically typed. That's only the beginning of the technical differences between these two wildly distinct languages that have since shifted onto a collision course of sorts, thanks to Node.js."

Comments

Battle for mindshare, or for page hits?

[QuietLagoon]

Is there a real battle going on? Or is the battle in the head of some writers who are creating an ersatz battle in order boost their page hit count?

.
Computer media are usually pretty dull, so there's nothing like a supposed battle to up the interest.

This is not a mindshare battle...at all

[MillerHighLife21]

Javascript, despite it's popularity, is a terrible language. It's popularity is due to one thing, it is embedded in the browser. If you could just pick your own language to embed in the browser, you'd never hear of it. The entire level of popularity from Node.js has come from 3 things:

1. Frontend (read, client side, not "PHP") developers who get the idea in their head that they already know javascript so wouldn't it be great to use it on the server too so they don't have to learn another language
2. Non-blocking I/O, which is admittedly very worthwhile on the server side...however, Java still blows it out of the water for concurrency and Go is currently doing everything that Node does here, but better.
3. AJAX development, making JSON popular, leading to JSON based NoSQL databases like Mongo (which is great at what it does) and then uses Javascript for processing in the database too because of JSON

There's a 4th reason that gets tossed around that I've never seen actually validated with the idea of "reusing code on the backend and the front-end" but I've never seen a case where that was actually a good idea since it involves exposing so much logic.

On the frontend, yes, Javascript everything...because you have no other option. That's like saying black was beating green for mind share with the Model T Ford.

On the backend, you have Java, Go, .NET, Ruby, Python, PHP, Clojure, Groovy, Erlang, Perl, Scala...all of these languages exist with different benefits and different trade offs.

If anything, a huge piece of Go's skyrocketing popularity is people wanting the non-blocking I/O perk of Node for certain use cases without all of the pain that comes from dealing with Javascript.